Sami Haahtinen <ressu@ressukka.net> writes:
> I can understand that a part of the people behind Debian feel hostile
> against Ubuntu because it's succeeding in something that Debian was
> trying to achieve. But what i can't understand is that people behind
> Ubuntu are trying to reach out and build a bridge between the people in
> Debian and some people are intentionally trying to burn them. They are
> really investing time on the co-operation, they are creating tools to
> help this. What are the Debian people doing, they are bitching about
> Ubuntu people not putting their backs in to it.
For those who are concerned with closer co-operation between Debian and
Ubuntu, lots of people have already tried to send a clear message. The
best way to encourage and help this is to *stop posting things like the
above* and just go work on syncing changes. Help with the work, don't
tell us what we do and don't believe.
As long as you keep accusing people of burning bridges or bitching about
other people's work, those of us who feel like we have legitimate concerns
tend to want to repeat them or try to explain them again. The result is
that threads about the *differences* get longer and longer and accumulate
more posts, and as a result the gap looks wider and wider.
If, on the other hand, you'd accept that a lot of Debian developers really
care deeply about things like free software and aren't going to use tools
like Launchpad *but still want to co-operate*, stopped bringing up the
things that we disagree about, and started trying to improve communication
by taking a few Ubuntu fixes and filing them as Debian patches, or helping
with a Debian transition like the modular X transition that will obviate
the need for tons of divergence, or did something else concrete to bring
the distributions closer together, you'd find that many of the same people
who are arguing with you here would happily help.
Personally, I monitor the Ubuntu patches for all of my packages and apply
whatever looks reasonable. Maybe it's not the best way to contribute back
changes, but it works fine for me. It probably wouldn't if my packages
had more complex differences, so finding a better way to communicate those
complex differences would be valuable work. If closer collaboration is
something you want to see, stop telling us that the only reason why we're
not working harder for Ubuntu is because we're jealous, *listen* to what
we're actually saying, and help synchronize the hard cases.
All this nattering on mailing lists doesn't make the software any better.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>